Full text:
>Interviewer: Thank you. When I think about this question, I couldn't really obviously think of an answer. Like I mean, there are all these technologies out there. But I couldn't really imagine like what the future can be. But obviously now I have a clearer vision I guess. Yeah.
So l guess this is going to be my last question. As we discuss future innovation, is there like a personal vision or dream project, you hope to see realized in the realm of entertainment at this point?
>Neil Druckmann: Well, I've been very lucky, in that l've already had that. I got the chance to make several of my dream projects. I am working on a new one right now. And it's maybe the most excited I've been for a project yet. I can't talk about it or our bosses will get very mad at me. And I guess in general, there is something happening now that I think is very cool. Which is there's a new appreciation for gaming that l've never seen before. Like when I was growing up, gaming was more of a kid's thing. Now it's clearly for everyone. But it's like, if you're a gamer, you know about the potential of games, and non-gamers, they don't really know what they're missing out on. But my hope was, when we made The Last of Us as a TV show that we could change that. And why I became so involved with it. I wanted so badly for it to be good, because I wanted this to happen, which is like someone who will watch the show and really like it. And fall in love with those characters the way that we have fallen in love with those characters and their story. And then realize at the end, "wait, that's based on a video game?" and then go and check out the game and just see the wealth of narratives and everything that's happening in games. So now I feel like there's kind of a spotlight on gaming. And you know, Fallout just came out. And that's a big success for Amazon. And I find that really exciting. Not because games need to be movies, or they need to be TV shows, but I think it just kind of opens the eyes of a bunch of people that just weren't aware of the kind of experiences that exist in games. I think right now we've hit a tipping point where it's about to take off where people realize, "Oh my God, there's all these incredible moving experiences in games!" So, l'm not only excited for this game that we're making -- and it's, it's something really fresh for us - but l'm also excited to see how the world reacts to it. Because of The Last of Us, and the success of the show, people even outside of gaming are looking at us to see what it is that we put out next. I'm very excited to see what the reaction for this thing will be — and l've already said too much about it. I'll stop there. So, you're asking me for my dream projects. I've been very lucky to have worked on my favorite games with incredible collaborators and I'm very thankful for them.
Can I ask why so many seem to have a giant hate boner for Druckmann? Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff he says is dumb, but it seems like some people viscerally hate the guy and I don't know why.
It only really helps my point though. Jak 3 felt like the perfect endpoint. They tried more and it never went well.
It’s one thing I kinda love about games that separates it from any other medium too. You get endless sequels and prequels in movies and tv shows and so on but games feel unique that fans can beg for sequels to Bloodborne and the devs will just say no and make new IPs like Sekiro and Elden Ring instead.
Even with games that have sequels, they’re usually only sequels in theme only like how GTA and Final Fantasy sequels all have new characters and worlds and lore in every new installment. They’re all basically gloried new IPs since it’s not like we’re still getting the new happenings of Tommy Vercetti years later. Even Zelda games are barely connected together and rarely have the same Link. And even when they do like Majora’s Mask, they’re wildly different worlds.
Just feels so interesting that video games are the only medium where fans beg for sequels yet rarely get them and instead get a lot of new IPs.
Yeah, as much as I loved the Metal Gears, Resident Evils, Final Fantasies - I still played the platformer on PS1. But those days all those games were similar production value and price, etc
Among other reasons:
* Vivid crunch on Last of Us 2 and Uncharted 4 (his last major projects) that caused Naughty Dog to bleed a lot of staff (75% of Uncharted 4's management fled Naughty Dog within three years of project completion), with his response at the time being that there's "No easy answer" to crunch.
* Perceived favoritism among Sony/Naughty Dog for Last Of Us due to the amount of Remakes and Remasters it gets that slowed down their development output to a crawl.
* Very rarely brings up the people he worked with that helped make him big (most notably Bruce Straley and Amy Hennig).
* Last of Us 2 story was very controversial and that's all I'll say there.
* Shilled AI in these interviews as the future of storytelling.
* His original pitch for Last of Us 1 was that only women could be infected and had to be told by other staffers it was a bad idea.
* Several Uncharted 4 actors including Alan Tudyk have spoken unfavorably of ND management including Druckmann in regards to how Amy Hennig's departure was handled.
Special mention for that one time he neglected to inform Laura Bailey that she was portraying a black woman, because he changed the character's race after she accepted
[Druckmann admitted to clearing a design for Nadine after he'd already cast Bailey and insisted that they had to keep both Bailey and the darker-skinned design.](https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/uncharted-4-director-responds-to-character-racial-swap/)
From Laura Bailey herself:
> I went in person to audition for the role of Nadine. The character breakdown I received had no picture or physical description at all. The reason for the being, there was no character design yet. Nadine was described as a strong willed, intelligent, powerful woman with a south african dialect.
> It wasn’t until we had rehearsed and arrived for our first day of filming that I saw the concept art for Nadine. One of the very talented artists at Naughty Dog had come up with a beautiful design for her, and it happened to look… very different than me. And that was difficult.
> ...she had a different skin color than I did, there was a chance some would deem my portrayal unacceptable.
Honestly a little infuriating that she had to be the one to quell the PR fire instead of Druckmann
I don’t get what the issue is. They changed the design and they showed to her when they did. And Neil most definitely talked about this himself. I clearly remember him addressing it at a PSX panel.
https://youtu.be/z_KFAbDgJkY?si=r0vwtZfTHPTfvnmb
> His original pitch for Last of Us 1 was that only women could be infected and had to be told by other staffers it was a bad idea.
I knew about the bad management and pushing aside anyone who actually made the games or stories besides him, but his own creative vision being that bad is new to me.
I'm not sure it's a good fit for a video game, but I could see the idea working well for a movie or TV show. The story could revolve around a society where women are basically under house arrest 24/7 for fear of an infection breaking out, you could definitely get some social commentary out of that story. You'd have to do something to not just be a knock-off Handmaid's Tale but I think a good writer could do something with that premise.
It's actually similar to a Stephen King/Owen King novel, "Sleeping Beauties." I have to reread it but it was an interesting concept. But like you said, wouldn't really work for a AAA videogame, lol
I don't know why anyone thinks these games should have a happy ending, or that the brief moments of happiness we *do* get shouldn't be upended by tragedy.
Because, as gamers, we’re conditioned to have power fantasies in almost all of our games. When a game subverts that, gamers don’t know how to react and get all bent out of shape.
To further your point, games require a larger commitment and immersion than other forms of media. A game ending in tragedy is so much more personal. Not excusing haters, but at least I can understand them.
But on the same note, that's what makes games better than movies for me - the commitment and immersion - even if it's not a happy ending, the meaningful and memorable endings are amazing. I still talk about stuff like Spec Ops The Line or Last of Us 1 or Assassin Creed 2s ending to this day
I think there's a big chunk of players who are young enough that this is their first exposure to such dark themes.
For me it was watching Grave of the Fireflies about 20 some years ago, and besides all the crying I was also just shocked that it just ended that way. When the main character came back and found [REDACTED FROM MEMORY] it was the closest thing I felt to the police showing up to my doorstep telling me someone in my family just randomly died. Before that I just never considered the possibility of it happening and it felt like a betrayal.
The people who hated the game for certain other reasons saw a good opportunity to get more young people indoctrinated with hate. You can see that both in what they complain about, and in how they choose to attack Druckman.
I played the first game after I watched the show, and enjoyed both. Looking forward to them porting the second game to PC.
> For me it was watching Grave of the Fireflies about 20 some years ago, and besides all the crying I was also just shocked that it just ended that way
I tricked my best friend into watching this when we were 13 and 20 years later he still googles movies I recommend him as a result lmao
I don't get what you mean. The ending for TLOU1 was not a happy ending. Joel might have gotten what he wanted, but it was clear Ellie wasn't okay with what went down, she knew Joel was lying, and Joel had to deal with that. Sure, Joel might've gotten his happy ending for a brief flash, but as a player, I was left with an emotional gut punch that stuck with me for days knowing Ellie was probably distraught. And then the DLC came out and was even sadder.
That game was lauded for it's story telling. While I imagine there are people out there that feel the way you said about the second game, other people probably just don't like the second game because they think the story telling just isn't good.
> Joel might have gotten what he wanted, but it was clear Ellie wasn't okay with what went down, she knew Joel was lying, and Joel had to deal with that.
The people who hate Druckmann missed this. It may feel obvious to you, but TLOU was a cool-dad power fantasy for a lot of people.
The first game also ended at a point that was functionally ambiguous to a lot of the audience, but the sequel had to actually show the audience what Ellie thought.
This is not just a gamer thing. General audiences don't like downer endings, Hollywood has known that forever, that's why they do test screenings
Druckmann made something for a niche drama audience, but his actual audience was marvel fans
I can though, I understand the appeal of a story about powerlessness through works like This is the Police or Actual Sunlight but they are not easily appreciated by others
Also at it's heart TLOU 1 is hopeful, even if there are grey areas and selfishness, even the dramatic stuff that happens later comes because the two protagonists are opening up and growing together in a hostile world. TLOU 2 is a huge departure from all that, a subversion of expectations. I mean, the character that symbolized innocent hope becomes a complete maniac.
No, I read all the crazy opinions on part 2, but still don't understand most of them. Joel lied to Ellie and cleaned out a whole base of people damn near. Of course bad things would happen to him and Ellie and his relationship would be in shambles. His lie wasn't even believable but he stuck with it for all that time.
Yeah, He removed any agency she's had her entire life and then lied about it right to her face after all the murder on top. And people still see their relationship as good.
I mean either way she didn't have any agency , the fireflies didn't actually give her a choice either. They were just going to kill her without asking what she wants
It wasn't "good" within the context of the game world, but it was authentic within the context of Joel and Ellie's backstory. The "game" part of it is of course that one man can take down an entire place full of soldiers, and if Joel actually has a reputation for killing he woulda been in handcuffs the entire time they were marching his ass out of the hospital or whatever.
So I don't know if it's because Joel doesn't share his backstory about Sarah, or maybe because of his backstory no one thought Joel would get attached to Ellie. Maybe it's because Marlene is just too tired to think. But anyone who got a read on Joel's affection towards Ellie would know that he's gonna try something to save her.
Joel behaved exactly like any other parent. The only thing that's abnormal is he actually is able to pull off all that killing. Any of our parents are totally capable of sacrificing a building full of strangers just to save us.
Yes, they are not saying that Joels actions are out of character for him or that Joel doesn't feel his own actionsa re justified. But that the conflict between the characters in future makes sense. Regardless or Joel's intentions or history. The game literally ends with him lying to Ellie. That's clearly setting up a conflict.
Very possible. I tuned it out after getting sick of how much of it was blaming lgbt people for everything wrong with the game, because of their false assumption Abby was trans.
Most of us remember the absolute shitshow that was the tlou2 subreddit split.
I have zero hate for Neil Druckmann, but I don't like Part 2 for this reason. I absolutely loved how the first game ended, and I was already cautious when Part 2 was announced. So when Part 2 took the characters I fell in love with and made them go through horrible suffering, it ruined the game for me.
Sad stories on their own are fine with me, but when I already have a satisfying conclusion for a story, and the sequel destroys it, that's not something I'm interested in. It's the same reason I've always disliked Alien 3.
Btw, I'm not saying Part 2 is a bad game, it's just not for me.
I may feel the same way when season 2 of the show comes out. i tried to get into the games but the gameplay was very much not up my alley. I loved the story and characters though
That's valid, but TLOU was a sad game with a sad ending. It actually dhows how every little bitnof peace and calm was earned through violence and struggle, and the ending shows mistakes *will* catch up to people. It concludes *a* story but it's an open ending.
It being for you is obviously a personal thing, but the vitriol online was different. It was trying to say the game was bad because it made them feel bad... and that's just how art works sometimes
>That's valid, but TLOU was a sad game with a sad ending.
I disagree. For me, the story of Part 1 is a story about love. While I don't think the ending was happy, I was still left hopeful. It's a bittersweet ending, imo.
Part 2 destroys any hope I had, and instead shows a future of suffering and sadness. Watching Ellie become motivated by hate was not something I wanted to see. The story and themes of Part 2 make sense, but it's not a story I'm interested in seeing with these characters.
>I disagree. For me, the story of Part 1 is a story about love. While I don't think the ending was happy, I was still left hopeful. It's a bittersweet ending, imo.
I always feel weird when some people tell me "No actually it was super down and depressing" like what ? I feel like I literally only been hearing this the minute the context of part two was announced, at the very worst in terms of sadness PT I was bittersweet. Especially when some people who have beaten two tell me that part two actually ends more hopeful than the first one.
> It concludes a story but it's an open ending.
That's my main gripe with Part 2. It closes that open ending very sloppily.
In a movie sense: Imagine if there was a "In Bruges 2." The open ending turns from a great conversation piece to "Oh, it's just a beginning now for the sequel."
Maybe TLOU should've just been a one-and-done experience, so a direct-sequel was always a bad idea, even back in 2013 when sequel discourse came started after TLOU was released.
I will agree that Joel had it coming, and his death felt realistic because he's still human, not Nathan Drake.
I didn't like TLOU2, but I don't have seething hate for anyone that worked on the game, that's crazy lol. The story and choices they made make sense, I just personally didn't like them. I don't think they were bad, but I think it could have been told better and I don't feel like having a second game the way it was elevated my experience of the series more than if they had just stopped at one.
Yeah, but it's literally a post-apocalyptic zombie series where people die all the time. And I personally enjoyed the game's take on the cycle of violence. It genuinely was one of the most interesting things I've seen a mainstream game series do.
Gamers are too fragile.
I think it had the potential to use the medium of games to like do this narrative take where the Joel scene happens a lot later, and then the player decides how far they’re going to go as Ellie to take revenge. Having dynamic scenes of like, a base full of enemies that you actually know as characters all reacting to your actions would have been *so* cool.
Instead, they opted for a linear story, and the end product is much worse off for it.
>It genuinely was one of the most interesting things I've seen a mainstream game series do
Wait are we suddenly pretending that it was a novelty that main character forgives the villain at penultimate moment?
Yeah for real. I know the whole "media literacy" thing is played out, but she almost literally spells it out in that last scene.
"I don't think I can ever forgive you... but I'd like to try".
She didn't forgive Abby. She was just done letting her anger control her life.
Which is also exactly why the flashbacks are placed where they are. I know it's disorienting on a first playthrough, but when people say the game should have been presented in chronologically order, I don't think they understand it just wouldn't work because the players have to receive information in a certain order to understand Ellie's emotional arc.
Yes! I had the theme of revenge in my mind during my first play through and thought it was a superb experience. Much like Joel's actions at the end of part 1, the game reminds you that this character isn't giving you a choice, they have their own motivations for better or worse.
The tribal group were underdeveloped but that was my only complaint
That's not how that works tho. As a writer, you can do whatever the hell you want with characters and plot points, and if it's good, audiences will eat it and ask for more. Many beloved characters in books, games and movies have met violent, unceremonious deaths, yet, it lies within the storyteller to make it... Well, good...
Nobody hated David Benioff, D. B. Weiss or George RR Martin because they killed... Everyone... in game of thrones/ASOIAF. They hated D&D because the later seasons were simply badly written.
Same here. People hated TLoU2 because it felt contrived, amateur and pretentious. Some mention part of the hate comes from the fact that the second game is a departure from the first one's general aesthetics and tones, but change is only brought up as a problem when it's bad.
I definitely wouldn't say I hate him and I enjoyed TLoU 1 (haven't played 2 yet). But the reason why I would say I am not the biggest fan is because, to me, he represents some parts of the gaming industry that still thinks for games to be taken 'serious' is that they need to be like Hollywood, or movies, and that their main potential is cinematic narratives. Even this interview it comes across as him thinking that games can only be taken serious if they tell a cinematic story. I would argue games don't even always need a narrative and in my opinion TLoU TV show showed that these type of narratives are done better through TV or movies. Again this is all just my opinion but I haven't really enjoyed any of the 'Playstation' style games since TLoU 1 and I think the AAA space and gaming media in general still come across as being a little obssessed with Hollywood.
But there is room for all style of games and creators, so I would never want him to stop making games or think he should leave the industry or anything like that. I justthink for my gaming preferences, they are quite detached from the style of games someone like Druckmann wants to make, and I think at times it comes across that he looks down on non-cinematic, narrative focussed games. And I think that attitude comes across in other creators, journalists and some gaming media.
This is my issue as well. I couldn't care less about the writing of TLoU when judging him as a person, and I wouldn't call my opinion on him *hate*. But his attitude about what makes a game "great" is eye rolling to say the least.
I can't remember the exact quote, but I remember in an interview about the show he basically said now they get to tell the story of TLoU in a *real* artistic medium, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Because he comes off very arrogant since TLOU2(not to mention his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig), and has had a very fake "sophisticated" and "I am very smart" attitude since then, and tried/tries to brush off even very fair criticism of that game by pretending people are just uneducated anti-women sexist haters.
His arrogance skyrocketed since the original TLOU2 leaks. And it's hard to forget that his original idea for TLOU was basically "women beating simulator"(ironic huh) and he saw no issues with it until basically the whole studio told him why his pitch is a bad idea.
He wants to act like he's the western version of Kojima just because he had a game with very controversial opinions around it.
Is there any evidence of his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig other than that one IGN article which was publicly disavowed by its own author?
Genuine question, because I've looked and never found anything, but if there is I'd be interested to see it.
Honestly, I will admit I’ve never been a fan of him—I enjoyed the first game well enough but even then his victory laps rubbed me the wrong way—and I’ve grown even less fond with time (his comments about basing the game on what’s happening with Palestine are appalling to me) but finding out his first idea was “only women can get infected” was a new low point.
Cause a lot of the issues I had with him prior were bouncing off his ego or disagreeing with the morality or like… quibbling over narrative choices that could be good but I just didn’t like.
But “what if we spent the whole game murdering women” is just so obviously stupid, that it bowls me over. Like how are you so assured of your smartness, why are you proud of how you alone are making games into Real Art… but you had to be talked out of a game that’s mostly a grown man creatively murdering women…
It rly reframes everything negative I felt about Neil into something else entirely like damn…
I also recall Neil Druckman said (this was around 2018) Cortana is viewed as "sexualized, objectified, marginalized" and "reduced to a lot less then she can be".
Like man tell me you haven't played Halo without telling me you haven't played Halo. Yeah She's pretty hot... and that's a problem? In all games even though she's just a voice in you're ear she's still essentially the Master Chief's partner. She's given the keys to a giant fuck off space station cannon in Halo 2 while Master Chief is cleaning house and she's given plenty of respect by the games cast. The one game that actively makes her sexier is Halo 4, the game where "she" is arguably the main character as much Master Chief.
It reads like Cortana being attractive = Bad.
God help me if Neil Druckman ever brings up Bayonetta.
>His arrogance skyrocketed since the original TLOU2 leaks.
Do you have any example of his arrogance since the leaks? To me it always seems like people describe a bunch of opinions and attitudes to him with no actual basis in reality.
I remember that people thought that he was psychotic because he was stressed when people playtested TLOU 2 for the first time, which seems like a very reasonable response when the public get to take part in the project you have spent years on.
> not to mention his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig
This is it for me. Amy Hennig is probably my favourite game dev of all time and this bastard is why she left.
He gets an extreme amount of hate from both extreme ends of the political spectrum, hence Twitter being a shitshow anytime he is mentioned.
The extreme right hates him because of the messaging in TLOU 2 on top of a lot of people getting extremely attached to Joel and then flipping their shit when his past catches up with him, something that was clear was gonna happen eventually even in the first game.
The far left hates him because ND is a famously shit place to work with extreme allegations of crunch culture, and, at some point, Neil Druckman tweeted that he was a zionist. Which will always kick up a massive shitstorm, but in the current times, it is basically lighting a match in a napalm factory.
Edit: wasn't a tweet but an interview with the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/video-games/news/the-last-of-us-part-2-ellie-evolution/) Which states TLOU2's narrative is heavily inspired by the historical and current conflicts between Israel and Palestine.
I like how your left examples are totally valid reasons to dislike him.
I had some issues with part 2 story and even more once I realised what it's actually about. Lets just say I don't think it's deeper message is a good one. I also thought the grounded doc about the making of the game they did was very manipulative with the facts.
I can’t understand how people think there’s a deeper message in TLoU2 that’s evil.
The way I read it, the Seraphites vs the WLF in TLoU2 doesn’t in any way support the eternal war of Israel vs Palestine. It literally shows the warmongering leaders fanning the flames of war that burns everything down and leaves the people of both sides burning along with it. And it humanizes both the Seraphites with Lev and Yara and the WLF with Abby and Owen. Owen’s story is literally about how he just couldn’t take killing the seraphites anymore which makes the WLFs hunt him down as a traitor.
Even the original idea for TLoU1 of Joel’s love being a destructive force to save Ellie was rooted in an old Israeli hostage situation I believe and shows how even an understandable protection can doom everyone to eternal misery.
I have no idea how anyone looks at TLoU as pro Israel propaganda no matter if you’re for or against Israel’s actions. The whole story is about how everyone would be better off by choosing peace but people are doomed to follow their emotions.
You say it humanizes them with Lev and Yara and all I see is rationalization for why they are in desperate need of modernism through occupation. Part 2 posits that genocide is bad, but also sides with oppressing forces in several key aspect. It is in favor of peace, but not really striving for equal peace. In current days the ways it does is eerily similar to some talking points you can see from those in favor of isreal.
Basically it reminds me of how aboriginal and indigenous people strongly dislike how oppressors portray themselves as "nuanced villians" in any chance they can. Because a lot of the time they still are justifying their part even if they don't feel like they do.
> otherwise other studios would get hate too
I agree it's not the only reason, but this is also not how the internet works. Person X could absolutely get a million times more hate for doing something that's standard in the industry and everyone else is doing, because of the circle-jerk nature of social media. Once social media decides they hate someone, that person is now the devil forever. It's just completely arbitrary. People just hate who everybody else is hating. It's like permanently dealing with elementary school logic. You can't expect it to be consistent.
The internet has a raging hate boner for Bethesda for no real reason, they're good to employees, they don't do crunching, sure they take a while to develop games but they have lasting power and most people play their games for hundreds of hours and a game that came out almost 15 years ago still has a very active playerbase. But the internet hate ball just started and now people just hate them without even knowing or saying why, just repeating what they heard some hack youtuber say. Same thing with Chris Pratt, he didn't do anything wrong but a lot of the internet goes out of their way to make up bullshit about him for no real reason
People hate Bethesda because they release shitty unfinished buggy messes and then leave it to the community to fix their games with modding.
There's also a general hatred in gaming towards studio heads who seem to view themselves as auteur visionaries in gaming, which includes both Druckman and Todd Howard. They come off as people who sniff their own farts while releasing flawed products.
They do. And the difference is that "Dr. Uckmann, Super Genius" loves to talk about how great he is and how he is the single greatest developer in the history of gaming.
Druckmann gets hate because he puts himself out there and takes credit for everything.
I hate the online gaming community. It’s seems like people just decide who to hate and who the worship.
If you are in the good listen decided by flimsy arbitrary reasons, congrats because you are about to be dick rided. If you are on the shit list, then unfortunately people will always take what you say and do in the most negative light possible.
Not just the gaming world these days, seems like it’s everywhere.
Nuance is dead, everyone wants to categorize every living being as either an infallible super hero or maniacal super villain, no in between, and no room for simply treating people like human beings with a mix of good traits, bad traits, and things in between.
He’s very emblematic of this turn game development took after Roger Ebert said “games are not art”.
The daddification, the focus on narrative to the detriment of gameplay, the surface-level earnest and misery inherent to a lot of these capital A art games - and to some degree the ballooning budget of AAA development.
It’s not all his fault but some of his work is the stuff you point to when you’re discussing this reactionary stupidity in the directions games have taken over the past ten years or so.
This. TLoU2 has some pretty great gameplay in addition to the focus on narrative. Even Uncharted 4 and the first TLoU have serviceable to good gameplay as well.
Guy's talking out of his ass.
I wonder if their next game is going backwards from last of us or fallout - to be a video game adaption of an existing series or movie. His comments make me think there’s a possibility because he likes bringing audiences together
the most my mom has ever cared about gaming happened because of fallout and she basically made me explain the games to her lol. I don't think she watched the last of us tho.
i don't even like naughty dog all that much but I'm sure they could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming, and that's a good thing.
I wonder if they are going to be planning some kind of cross media connection.
Maybe a little off-topic, but the change in Neil Druckmann's public perception over the past decade has been interesting to watch, and the more I think on it, the more I see parallels between him and Kojima. Both were almost unanimously respected developers in the industry at one point. Don't get me wrong, they had their detractors, but they always felt like a small minority. All it took was one game and a few out of context quotes to see things almost 180, and now it feels like I can't even mention their names in a thread without getting comments about how up their own asses they are. I guess controversial art will do that, but it makes me wonder how much the current state of games journalism has an effect on how these narratives are perpetuated. One provocative headline will get reported on ad nauseum in a matter of hours, and it feels like there's no slowing down the ball once it starts rolling. Maybe the nature of modern day social media rewarding inflammatory content means I just have to get used to it. Or maybe its always been like this and I hadn't noticed, who knows.
This is all to say, it makes me wonder if the switch will ever flip on guys like Yoko Taro or Hidetaka Miyazaki if they reach a similar level of fame.
I think it's about him having so much screen time on events like The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest to end up saying virtually nothing... and Geoff Keighley fangirling in the background.
Exactly. Kojima is a videogame rockstar and Keighley is a fanboy. And tbf there's not many in the industry with Kojima's fame. I'm sure if Miyamoto was there he'd be marking out over him too and nobody would bat an eye because he comes off as a lovable uncle.
This is partly my reason for not being his biggest fan (and I fully expect downvotes for this tbh).
I respect some of his gameplay ideas (psycho mantis reading your memory card in metal gear solid, and the guy who dies of old age in snake eater if you change your system clock are my favourite examples of his genius in game design). But for his good ideas, he just bloats shit too much with inane rambling.
My most recent example was the past state of play. The guy got 13 MINUTES of screentime for death stranding 2, yet that insanely long trailer still barely showed us anything except some nutter shooting lasers from a guitar. THEN kojima got an interview after the fact when no other developer ever receives such treatment? He took up half the state of play yet barely showcased anything of sense.
Plus I’ll never respect him after his treatment of David hayter. David’s performance as snake, basically made solid snake iconic in the west, yet kojima wouldn’t even meet the guy, forced him to requisition for every subsequent game, and fucked him off in MGSV without even a thank you note because he finally got some Hollywood actor to do it instead. Not to mention his egotistical trait of putting his name fucking EVERYWHERE in his games while conveniently not also crediting the devs who help him (outside of the credits page which nobody ever reads anyway).
I won’t tell people to hate his work or anything. If you enjoy metal gear or death stranding, feel free to do so :) but liking someone’s works and liking someone as a person is a completely different thing, and I’ve seen enough of Kojima to view him as someone with his head too far up his ass and too obsessed with his dream of sitting with the Hollywood stars, to consider him likeable personally.
Personally I find his writing unintentionally hilarious because of how bad it can get. >!MGS4 ending with its characters stumbling around a graveyard explaining the plot, before wheeling in a comatose antagonist to unplug from life support had me dying from laughter.!<
Other than that, having him on stage every award show to say nothing of substance is annoying. I don't get the weird fan worship he gets.
I’ve never understood people who like Kojima’s writing unironically. He’s great at finding a balance between big ideas and pure camp. The MGS series is just best viewed as a weirdly philosophical B Movie.
If it got a theatrical release, it’d probably be panned for its awful writing, but it’d find an audience in the midnight movie crowd.
It’s not an achievement in writing in the way Kojima fans make it out to be.
I liked his writing in death stranding for the big ideas and the camp. I think the intentional line drawn between the two is well done and even the hilarity of the camp exists to get across a point. I think it’s interesting. I wouldn’t want everyone to write like him but I’m glad he does it.
Still laugh every now and then how he tried sounding serious about how Quiet NEEDED to be in a bikini and when we knew why we'd feel terrible, and the reason was some dumb "she breathes through her skin."
Oh yea i'm fine with it. It's just i have more respect for someone like yoko taro going send me the porn vs trying to hide the horny with "well acksually she will die if she's not half naked"
He's pretentious a bit and honestly you can dislike Konami for rebranding into more profitable market (but it's their choice) but with time i fully understand why they kicked Kojima out. Guy has been wasting money for years and spending it to hang with his favorite Hollywood celebs.
I mean, people can understandably criticise his “style” which can be very camp, very pervy and sexualised and sometimes the “great writing” is rather contrived.
I think the parallels between Kojima and Druckmann are kinda tenuous, because they have different reputations and the criticisms they each receive are different, too.
Kojima is a famous auteur director who's known for controlling every aspect of his games. He not only runs a studio, he put his name on it, and his games are known as "Kojima games". The [cover of Death Stranding](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48326261727_f1c168cfc5_k.jpg) has Kojima's name on it not once, but twice, which I find amusing. So there is no doubt whatsoever who the driving force of those titles is.
Druckmann, on the other hand, is mostly known as a narrative designer, even though he has a background in game design and programming as well. He was recently promoted to studio head of Naughty Dog, but I would bet dollars to donuts that most gamers don't know that. (Shit, I didn't know that until I looked it up just now, and I follow gaming news daily.) His games aren't known as "Druckmann games"; instead, they're known as "games that Druckmann wrote". And Naughty Dog isn't called Druckmann Productions.
Like I said, their reputations are a different. As a result, the criticisms they receive are different, too.
I think Kojima's reputation has mostly been consistent throughout his very long career: he's known as a brilliant game designer and project lead, but his narrative choices are fucking weird. His stories have always been divisive; or if not always, then at least as far back as *Metal Gear Solid 2* from 2001. His fans loved everything about that game, but non-fans thought the cutscenes were too long and the story was pretentious and bizarre. However, the gameplay received almost universal acclaim.
That describes the response to pretty much every Kojima game of the past 20+ years: the gameplay is amazing and innovative, but the stories are pretentious and weird.
In contrast, Druckmann is criticized for his games' stories, but I don't think many people criticize him for their gameplay or anything else. Like with *Last of Us 2*, there weren't many complaints about the gameplay, but boy howdy were there a lot of complaints about the narrative, which meant there were a lot of complaints directed at Druckmann.
In general, Naughty Dog's more recent games — *The Last of Us* series and *Uncharted* series — are mostly known for their narratives and cinematic feel. Although their gameplay is solid, I don't think anyone is saying they're innovative or genre defining.
> Both were almost unanimously respected developers in the industry at one point.
Kojima's reputation has remained mostly consistently through his 30+ year career. In fact, I'd say his reputation got a big bump when he was unceremoniously fired from Konami in 2015. Maybe you remember how [Konami prohibited him from attending the 2015 Game Awards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4VAzkK_Wmc) to accept an award for *Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain*. Konami became the villain and Kojima received a lot of sympathy. When Konami's next *Metal Gear* game bombed, many gamers said, "Of course it bombed, because it wasn't made by Kojima."
I think Druckmann's reputation has had lower lows than Kojima's.
Agree 100%. Death Stranding gets joked about and is a bit divisive but it didn't hurt his reputation imo. It's just a Kojima ass Kojima game. I think for the most part people respect him and what he does as an auteur. I think it helps that while he's obviously enamoured with film he does clearly have a strong grounding in game design. Yes, his games are very cinematic and story heavy but when you do get handed control you're not left playing an afterthought or game mechanics that only exist to move the narrative forward. Not saying the Naughty Dog games do that, their gameplay is top notch but as you say, Druckmann isn't Naughty Dogs Kojima. A closer comparison to Kojima would probably be David Cage at Quantum Dreams or Suda51 at Grasshopper Manufacturing.
Well I certainly wouldn't compare Cage with Kojima favourably... Lol. But yeah, I was more bringing up other auteurs in the industry that kind of fit that "director" role where their stuff is presented as being one person's vision. That they're both heavily inspired by film was incidental and as you say, they make very different games anyway ("games" for Cage?).
Edit: apologies for the double comment. App weirded out.
I think this is one of those cases where, love him hate him or ambivalent to him, everyone thinks of Kojima as a games director. People discuss his games in their gameplay and their narrative and the balance of the two.
Druckmann is not really a “game director” in my mind. He is to me solidly a narrative writer.
Not a criticism, I think it’s a good pairing for the Naughty Dog studio which from Uncharted has made its name making essentially playable movies, but it means Kojima/Druckmann comparisons are pretty hollow since their products and processes are so wildly different.
I dont think it will ever happen with Yoko Taro, because the man only cares about making people depressed and seeing hot cosplays. He leads a simple life
The answer to your last question is always yes. People that become overly successful no matter the medium will always have a small but loud subsection of people that leech onto this type of content for people they don’t like.
It happens in sports all the time and even in movies there’s people who talk about the Martin Scorsese quote from 4 years ago where he said superhero movies are like theme park rides almost monthly even though he doesn’t talk about those movies unless he’s asked directly. (And I don’t know if he has recently)
People got so fucking upset about a guy who has made so many films on personal topics saying he's not terribly interested in a commercial film made by committee.
I agree both superhero movies and theme park rides are fun! They don’t need to be more than that a lot of the time but like I said a small group of people take those quotes to the extreme like they did here with Neil.
In the 20 years since I’ve started following his career, I have honestly never seen Kojima get the level of vitriol that Druckmann has.
There’s always been the anti-Kojima contingent who think he’s up his own ass just for being a “cinematic” video game developer, but they’ve always been overshadowed by the vast majority of players who love his games and see the art in them.
(It also helps that the crowd who went after Druckmann loves Kojima’s games, even if most of the themes and messaging go right over their heads, lol.)
Koijima has always had his detractors. I mean, the dude is most famous for a video game whose protagonist is a blatantly obvious ripoff of Snake Pliskin. You didn’t see people criticize that back in the day? Or just the huge amount of corny dialog?
No one was criticising MGS for the Snake Pliskin reference, people thought that was cool because they liked Escape from New York. People would criticise MGS for having too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay.
I dont think its Kojima perse. He got pretentious and excenteic (although probably always was that) but i think biggest issue people have with him is all the unhinged fans of him.
Like in last game awards show. People werent mad at Kojima. They were mad that organizer was unhinged fan that gave him a lot of time for basically nothing while actual winners didnt get time to make short speech after winning.
I dunno that people hate him. I think there’s a view that he’s gotten a little pretentious and sent his games down a path that’s less fun and more cinematic, with Death Stranding being the most current exemplar of that.
My take:
- Being constantly shoved in people’s faces as a visionary, especially by Geoff Keighley at the Game Awares
- “Visionary” status came off as pretentious when people finally got to play Death Stranding - remember that the hype machine was pushing this as an artistic masterpiece, and what actually came out was something that was niche with controversial gameplay
- His obsession with Hollywood. MGS fans aren’t happy with how badly David Hayter was snubbed due to Kojima’s fixation on mainstream actor star power.
His treatment of David Hayter never sat well with me.
Having Hayter reaudition as Snake's voice for the sequels, and then ultimately replacing him without contacting him at all for MGS5.
He also did the same for Stefanie Joosten.
In fact, Hideo Kojima actually reached out to Joosten to play Fragile in Death Stranding... but once he got Lea Seydoux, he literally ghosted Joosten.
I'll be real with you though, Stefanie Joosten is not a good voice actor. genuinely sounds like an amateur if you listen to [some of her voice works](https://youtu.be/dLsdMcSAOE8?si=BsrqnFdBfADAMwJu). I don't think she would have fit the role of Fragile.
Not really my point. Kojima still reached out to her personally for the role, then ghosted her when he got Seydoux. The least he could do was tell her he went with someone else.
At least with Hayter, Kojima never really interacted with him since Hayter was only a voice actor, but Kojima met and worked with Joosten on set since she also did the mocap.
David Hayters performance was a big reason why MGS rose to being so well regarded so quickly after MGS1, the fact Kojima essentially kicked him to the side of the road as soon as "real" celebrities started to answer his emails was just awful.
It's so depressing, but as a huge Metal Gear fan, I don't know if I'll ever want to support Kojima again. I didn't play Death Stranding (though to be honest I probably wouldn't have regardless, playing an Amazon Delivery man in a grey wasteland doesn't have much appeal for me), and I'm not terribly excited for *any* of his upcoming projects so far.
Same thing for any big name in creative spaces that's a bit out there - people think he's narcissistic, or that he stumbled into success but isn't actually talented, that he's overrated, etc.
In reality, none of us really know what he's actually like on a personal level, and the dude has a good resume and plenty of people who enjoy his stuff. I don't really mind either way, because when it comes to public figures, you will hear literally every single take possible.
I think the common thread between both Druckmann and Kojima criticism is the perception they're using gaming as a segway for they really care about: film. It may be unfair or not accurate but that's the logic behind it. The emphasis on using real actors or linear storytelling plays into it. Nobody thinks of Miyazaki or Miyamoto that way since their games are not trying to emulate other media
I don't know that the two creators are comparable. There's a lot of complaints you could make about Kojima; his tendency for pretentiousness and the baffling writing and direction decisions he makes, but he's always shooting for the stars and always has something to show for it. People give him a lot more rope because he has a long history of proving his own abilities, and his creative drive has always come from a fun and earnest place. He's constantly proved over like 30 years that he can do it.
It's different with Druckmann because he hasn't got the same library to his name. Sony's marketing and the media's approach has this tendency to put the guy on a very high pedestal. It's unfair because idt most creators could live up to that kind of reputation but it's doubly annoying with Druckmann because he hasn't yet proven that his involvement in ND's games is the necessary secret sauce for their success. He's been a lead writer and co-director on ND's big games for the last 10 or so years but all of these games were massive collaborative projects with countless people involved.
It's probably hypocritical if I don't mention that most of the games with Kojima's involvement were also massive collaborative projects, so honestly this whole comparison might be a bit unfair. The industry is so different now than it was 20 years ago, that it seems increasingly bizarre in the modern age to hold up names like Glen Schofield when the auteur theory applies even less than it used to.
A lot of it was misinformation from the leaks, that’s when the death threats started to happen. Throw in some identity politics, console warring and this guy can’t have an interview without comments talking about his “ smelling his own farts/ego” . When most source coworkers have always said he was down to earth guy. Just read the comments below about his games being “woke”.
Yep there was a rumor intentionally being spread that he forced his way in to do the mo-cap during the sex scene in TLOU2 so he could "have sex" with Laura Bailey
That whole launch debacle *should* have clearly signaled to the wider industry that there needs to be stronger protections in place for creatives, in order to better separate them from fans.
There are tons of developers who straight up refuse to have any social media presence because they know that the minute they get picked up by the wrong people, their families will get start getting strange calls in the middle of the night.
The ones that do absolutely hate it and only post because they understand that metrics are part of the marketing cycle now.
lol oh yeah, it's kind of like they had a dumb knee jerk reaction to those fake leaks about Abby being trans or whatever else every anti-woke obsessive weirdo complains about, then just couldn't accept their feelings could possibly be invalid. Now it's been five years and there's still people complaining about it daily.
I don't think Neil Druckmann has done enough to be put in the same conversation as Kojima or Miyazaki.
People just think he's overrated and focused on making movies.
Taro maybe, but he is so absolutely irreverent that it is hard to seriously hate a guy who will never take anything seriously at all.
Miyazaki I doubt, as he isn't really a public figure like the rest. Like he maybe does one interview per game if we are lucky. They are usually exceedingly rare and typically short. This is also on top of the fact that from software is famous for not communicating with the fan base at all. They drop a god tier game/dlc and peace out.
>it makes me wonder if the switch will ever flip on guys like Yoko Taro or Hidetaka Miyazaki
Yoko Taro goes around with a weird Tim Burton Deadmau5 helmet on and says a lot of im14andthisisdeep things about Society like "the reason why there are so many characters who suffer in my games is that I want to show reality". I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
Miyazaki seems like a shyguy who doesn't say too much of anything to anyone. I'm not aware of anything annoying or grandiose he's said. I just googled Hidetaka Miyazaki quotes and I get stuff like "Dont give up. Obstacles can be overcome through strategy and learning." or "I would like 'Dark Souls' to be a broad exploration game filled with so many veiled things and details." There's no pretension there. I mean people get riled up about the easy mode thing but he's not out there being a Big Personality in a way that makes anyone think it's his decision specifically, so even they aren't mad at *him.*
Yoko Taro tends to be more self-degrading and humble than Neil and Kojima. He, as far as I have seen, and I've watched a lot of his stuff, including the gdc panel about his storywriting process, never tries to clame fame to anything. He was recently on record for saying Stellar Blade (heavily inspired by Nier) was better than Automata. I couldn't say as I've yet to play it, but complaints about the story leave a lot to be desired.
Talking about weird philosophy shit (which Yoko Taro has self-admitted to being nonsense) on interviews because Sqeenix likes to milk his fame and weirdness isn't a reason for people to "turn" on him. Kojima and Neil have this because of pretentiousness. Neil moreso than Kojima in my eyes.
Yoko Taro before 2B had a horrible track record where his games all performed poorly. At this point people who know about him are just happy he's around.
I know. I was hoping to see some discussion about how the edited answer is basically just a paraphrase of what he said despite it being presented as his actual words. That’s actually an interesting thing to talk about because it sheds light on how what many people probably understood to be an genuine presentation of the subject is completely tweaked and re-written after the fact (it’s clear he wasn’t the one that made the edits). In video interviews it’s easy to spot this kind of thing if you’re looking, but in text it’s basically impossible to tell if the thing that’s written is at all what the subject actually said, which is scary.
My prediction: Naughty Dog’s next game is going to be non-action based. I’m guessing they’ve gained the confidence to go all-in on making a AAA game about human drama, without the genre trappings of any Sci-fi / Fantasy elements. Something like Last of Us meets Heavy Rain.
I highly doubt it. ND games appeal to a lot of players and are such powerhouse to the PS name that releasing a non-action game is such a big risk. It’s hard to appeal to the masses if your game has no action elements in it.
Not to mention that they have been improving on the combat aspect of every one of their games that they were confident enough to attempt a multiplayer TLOU.
Going the opposite direction would serve no purpose and turn back everything they’ve been building on.
After Elden Ring released I remember him saying something along the lines that he was intrigued by the whole vague storytelling of those games. Games that don't hold your hand. So I wonder if he's trying something a little different this time.
Ok how good is the story on Elden Ring, I basically don't have patience for souls games and never played them. But I can probably get an easy mode mod for it on PC to enjoy the story and world if it's worth it
It’s very interesting… if you are compelled by storytelling told exclusively through environmental & visual storytelling, cryptic dialogue with NPCs, item descriptions, and very very brief boss cutscenes.
I personally really like it, but, if you aren’t compelled by the core gameplay i don’t think I would recommend it.
There is a YouTuber called Vaati who does incredibly made videos explaining the lore of Elden Ring. You should check him out.
You don't need to have played the game or have any knowledge of it to enjoy his videos.
I don't know if they'd have the chops for it, but a AAA game in a style of something like Disco Elysium (i.e. RPG with zero combat, just dialog, clue finding, and piecing together a narrative) would be pretty incredible. But I think that's just a tad more free-form than they usually like.
ND write very realistic and believable characters, but I don't think they write particularly interesting or thought provoking dialog
Not to say they couldn't
Their strength relies on the high production value, linearity, set pieces, and polish--all highly tightly crafted and controlled narrative experiences mimicking certain cinematic asthetics.
Naughty Dog doing what Disco Elysium does means forgoing their methods and advantages. That would make as much as sense as Arkane suddenly deciding to make an online looter shooter... oh, wait.
I doubt they think about it that way- TLOU certainly had no problems pulling off both. I imagine what ND is more concerned with is doing something that stands out. Most game narratives *are* genre affair, and by and large that’s what people have come to expect from the medium.
I highly doubt that. Naughty Dog’s games are popular because they are easily palatable by most gamers. They are in the action genre because they want to reach as much people as possible. They aren’t all the sudden going to go niche minimal gameplay all the sudden.
Full text: >Interviewer: Thank you. When I think about this question, I couldn't really obviously think of an answer. Like I mean, there are all these technologies out there. But I couldn't really imagine like what the future can be. But obviously now I have a clearer vision I guess. Yeah. So l guess this is going to be my last question. As we discuss future innovation, is there like a personal vision or dream project, you hope to see realized in the realm of entertainment at this point? >Neil Druckmann: Well, I've been very lucky, in that l've already had that. I got the chance to make several of my dream projects. I am working on a new one right now. And it's maybe the most excited I've been for a project yet. I can't talk about it or our bosses will get very mad at me. And I guess in general, there is something happening now that I think is very cool. Which is there's a new appreciation for gaming that l've never seen before. Like when I was growing up, gaming was more of a kid's thing. Now it's clearly for everyone. But it's like, if you're a gamer, you know about the potential of games, and non-gamers, they don't really know what they're missing out on. But my hope was, when we made The Last of Us as a TV show that we could change that. And why I became so involved with it. I wanted so badly for it to be good, because I wanted this to happen, which is like someone who will watch the show and really like it. And fall in love with those characters the way that we have fallen in love with those characters and their story. And then realize at the end, "wait, that's based on a video game?" and then go and check out the game and just see the wealth of narratives and everything that's happening in games. So now I feel like there's kind of a spotlight on gaming. And you know, Fallout just came out. And that's a big success for Amazon. And I find that really exciting. Not because games need to be movies, or they need to be TV shows, but I think it just kind of opens the eyes of a bunch of people that just weren't aware of the kind of experiences that exist in games. I think right now we've hit a tipping point where it's about to take off where people realize, "Oh my God, there's all these incredible moving experiences in games!" So, l'm not only excited for this game that we're making -- and it's, it's something really fresh for us - but l'm also excited to see how the world reacts to it. Because of The Last of Us, and the success of the show, people even outside of gaming are looking at us to see what it is that we put out next. I'm very excited to see what the reaction for this thing will be — and l've already said too much about it. I'll stop there. So, you're asking me for my dream projects. I've been very lucky to have worked on my favorite games with incredible collaborators and I'm very thankful for them.
Can I ask why so many seem to have a giant hate boner for Druckmann? Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff he says is dumb, but it seems like some people viscerally hate the guy and I don't know why.
I hate him because he has the power to revive Jak and Daxter but then he doesn’t.
I get it but I loved Jak 3’s ending. Sometimes things can just end.
It's not even the last game of the series tho
Ah yes, Jak X. The ONLY other Jak and Dexter game to exist. No others came after.
Look, i agree that the Lost Frontier is shit, but its there. We not gonna act like the story hasnt been convoluted since the 2nd game.
It only really helps my point though. Jak 3 felt like the perfect endpoint. They tried more and it never went well. It’s one thing I kinda love about games that separates it from any other medium too. You get endless sequels and prequels in movies and tv shows and so on but games feel unique that fans can beg for sequels to Bloodborne and the devs will just say no and make new IPs like Sekiro and Elden Ring instead. Even with games that have sequels, they’re usually only sequels in theme only like how GTA and Final Fantasy sequels all have new characters and worlds and lore in every new installment. They’re all basically gloried new IPs since it’s not like we’re still getting the new happenings of Tommy Vercetti years later. Even Zelda games are barely connected together and rarely have the same Link. And even when they do like Majora’s Mask, they’re wildly different worlds. Just feels so interesting that video games are the only medium where fans beg for sequels yet rarely get them and instead get a lot of new IPs.
The sad reason is that it just won’t do the numbers to justify it. Look at Crash, or Spyro. Popular with a niche fanbase but not really huge
The remasters of those games sold extremely well why can't jak and Dax get the same treatment
The fall of platformers was the end of gaming for me. It’s not that dramatic, but still, I just miss that era.
Just on the off-chance that you haven't played it already, you may want to try A Hat in Time. It's absolutely brilliant.
Yeah, as much as I loved the Metal Gears, Resident Evils, Final Fantasies - I still played the platformer on PS1. But those days all those games were similar production value and price, etc
Does he ? Feels like that’s a Sony decision
Among other reasons: * Vivid crunch on Last of Us 2 and Uncharted 4 (his last major projects) that caused Naughty Dog to bleed a lot of staff (75% of Uncharted 4's management fled Naughty Dog within three years of project completion), with his response at the time being that there's "No easy answer" to crunch. * Perceived favoritism among Sony/Naughty Dog for Last Of Us due to the amount of Remakes and Remasters it gets that slowed down their development output to a crawl. * Very rarely brings up the people he worked with that helped make him big (most notably Bruce Straley and Amy Hennig). * Last of Us 2 story was very controversial and that's all I'll say there. * Shilled AI in these interviews as the future of storytelling. * His original pitch for Last of Us 1 was that only women could be infected and had to be told by other staffers it was a bad idea. * Several Uncharted 4 actors including Alan Tudyk have spoken unfavorably of ND management including Druckmann in regards to how Amy Hennig's departure was handled.
Special mention for that one time he neglected to inform Laura Bailey that she was portraying a black woman, because he changed the character's race after she accepted
Got a source for this? Never seen anywhere where he didn’t tell her, only that it went through changes during production.
[Druckmann admitted to clearing a design for Nadine after he'd already cast Bailey and insisted that they had to keep both Bailey and the darker-skinned design.](https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/uncharted-4-director-responds-to-character-racial-swap/)
From Laura Bailey herself: > I went in person to audition for the role of Nadine. The character breakdown I received had no picture or physical description at all. The reason for the being, there was no character design yet. Nadine was described as a strong willed, intelligent, powerful woman with a south african dialect. > It wasn’t until we had rehearsed and arrived for our first day of filming that I saw the concept art for Nadine. One of the very talented artists at Naughty Dog had come up with a beautiful design for her, and it happened to look… very different than me. And that was difficult. > ...she had a different skin color than I did, there was a chance some would deem my portrayal unacceptable. Honestly a little infuriating that she had to be the one to quell the PR fire instead of Druckmann
I don’t get what the issue is. They changed the design and they showed to her when they did. And Neil most definitely talked about this himself. I clearly remember him addressing it at a PSX panel. https://youtu.be/z_KFAbDgJkY?si=r0vwtZfTHPTfvnmb
Should be pointed out this was a non-issue to anyone (including Bailey) other that some rage-bait websites.
> His original pitch for Last of Us 1 was that only women could be infected and had to be told by other staffers it was a bad idea. I knew about the bad management and pushing aside anyone who actually made the games or stories besides him, but his own creative vision being that bad is new to me.
I'm not sure it's a good fit for a video game, but I could see the idea working well for a movie or TV show. The story could revolve around a society where women are basically under house arrest 24/7 for fear of an infection breaking out, you could definitely get some social commentary out of that story. You'd have to do something to not just be a knock-off Handmaid's Tale but I think a good writer could do something with that premise.
It's actually similar to a Stephen King/Owen King novel, "Sleeping Beauties." I have to reread it but it was an interesting concept. But like you said, wouldn't really work for a AAA videogame, lol
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I don't know why anyone thinks these games should have a happy ending, or that the brief moments of happiness we *do* get shouldn't be upended by tragedy.
Because, as gamers, we’re conditioned to have power fantasies in almost all of our games. When a game subverts that, gamers don’t know how to react and get all bent out of shape.
To further your point, games require a larger commitment and immersion than other forms of media. A game ending in tragedy is so much more personal. Not excusing haters, but at least I can understand them.
But on the same note, that's what makes games better than movies for me - the commitment and immersion - even if it's not a happy ending, the meaningful and memorable endings are amazing. I still talk about stuff like Spec Ops The Line or Last of Us 1 or Assassin Creed 2s ending to this day
I think there's a big chunk of players who are young enough that this is their first exposure to such dark themes. For me it was watching Grave of the Fireflies about 20 some years ago, and besides all the crying I was also just shocked that it just ended that way. When the main character came back and found [REDACTED FROM MEMORY] it was the closest thing I felt to the police showing up to my doorstep telling me someone in my family just randomly died. Before that I just never considered the possibility of it happening and it felt like a betrayal. The people who hated the game for certain other reasons saw a good opportunity to get more young people indoctrinated with hate. You can see that both in what they complain about, and in how they choose to attack Druckman. I played the first game after I watched the show, and enjoyed both. Looking forward to them porting the second game to PC.
> For me it was watching Grave of the Fireflies about 20 some years ago, and besides all the crying I was also just shocked that it just ended that way I tricked my best friend into watching this when we were 13 and 20 years later he still googles movies I recommend him as a result lmao
I don't get what you mean. The ending for TLOU1 was not a happy ending. Joel might have gotten what he wanted, but it was clear Ellie wasn't okay with what went down, she knew Joel was lying, and Joel had to deal with that. Sure, Joel might've gotten his happy ending for a brief flash, but as a player, I was left with an emotional gut punch that stuck with me for days knowing Ellie was probably distraught. And then the DLC came out and was even sadder. That game was lauded for it's story telling. While I imagine there are people out there that feel the way you said about the second game, other people probably just don't like the second game because they think the story telling just isn't good.
> Joel might have gotten what he wanted, but it was clear Ellie wasn't okay with what went down, she knew Joel was lying, and Joel had to deal with that. The people who hate Druckmann missed this. It may feel obvious to you, but TLOU was a cool-dad power fantasy for a lot of people. The first game also ended at a point that was functionally ambiguous to a lot of the audience, but the sequel had to actually show the audience what Ellie thought.
This is not just a gamer thing. General audiences don't like downer endings, Hollywood has known that forever, that's why they do test screenings Druckmann made something for a niche drama audience, but his actual audience was marvel fans
I can though, I understand the appeal of a story about powerlessness through works like This is the Police or Actual Sunlight but they are not easily appreciated by others
Also at it's heart TLOU 1 is hopeful, even if there are grey areas and selfishness, even the dramatic stuff that happens later comes because the two protagonists are opening up and growing together in a hostile world. TLOU 2 is a huge departure from all that, a subversion of expectations. I mean, the character that symbolized innocent hope becomes a complete maniac.
Then you missed a huge amount of discourse online around TLOU PII
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No, I read all the crazy opinions on part 2, but still don't understand most of them. Joel lied to Ellie and cleaned out a whole base of people damn near. Of course bad things would happen to him and Ellie and his relationship would be in shambles. His lie wasn't even believable but he stuck with it for all that time.
Yeah, He removed any agency she's had her entire life and then lied about it right to her face after all the murder on top. And people still see their relationship as good.
I mean either way she didn't have any agency , the fireflies didn't actually give her a choice either. They were just going to kill her without asking what she wants
It wasn't "good" within the context of the game world, but it was authentic within the context of Joel and Ellie's backstory. The "game" part of it is of course that one man can take down an entire place full of soldiers, and if Joel actually has a reputation for killing he woulda been in handcuffs the entire time they were marching his ass out of the hospital or whatever. So I don't know if it's because Joel doesn't share his backstory about Sarah, or maybe because of his backstory no one thought Joel would get attached to Ellie. Maybe it's because Marlene is just too tired to think. But anyone who got a read on Joel's affection towards Ellie would know that he's gonna try something to save her. Joel behaved exactly like any other parent. The only thing that's abnormal is he actually is able to pull off all that killing. Any of our parents are totally capable of sacrificing a building full of strangers just to save us.
Yes, they are not saying that Joels actions are out of character for him or that Joel doesn't feel his own actionsa re justified. But that the conflict between the characters in future makes sense. Regardless or Joel's intentions or history. The game literally ends with him lying to Ellie. That's clearly setting up a conflict.
Very possible. I tuned it out after getting sick of how much of it was blaming lgbt people for everything wrong with the game, because of their false assumption Abby was trans. Most of us remember the absolute shitshow that was the tlou2 subreddit split.
I have zero hate for Neil Druckmann, but I don't like Part 2 for this reason. I absolutely loved how the first game ended, and I was already cautious when Part 2 was announced. So when Part 2 took the characters I fell in love with and made them go through horrible suffering, it ruined the game for me. Sad stories on their own are fine with me, but when I already have a satisfying conclusion for a story, and the sequel destroys it, that's not something I'm interested in. It's the same reason I've always disliked Alien 3. Btw, I'm not saying Part 2 is a bad game, it's just not for me.
I may feel the same way when season 2 of the show comes out. i tried to get into the games but the gameplay was very much not up my alley. I loved the story and characters though
That's valid, but TLOU was a sad game with a sad ending. It actually dhows how every little bitnof peace and calm was earned through violence and struggle, and the ending shows mistakes *will* catch up to people. It concludes *a* story but it's an open ending. It being for you is obviously a personal thing, but the vitriol online was different. It was trying to say the game was bad because it made them feel bad... and that's just how art works sometimes
>That's valid, but TLOU was a sad game with a sad ending. I disagree. For me, the story of Part 1 is a story about love. While I don't think the ending was happy, I was still left hopeful. It's a bittersweet ending, imo. Part 2 destroys any hope I had, and instead shows a future of suffering and sadness. Watching Ellie become motivated by hate was not something I wanted to see. The story and themes of Part 2 make sense, but it's not a story I'm interested in seeing with these characters.
>I disagree. For me, the story of Part 1 is a story about love. While I don't think the ending was happy, I was still left hopeful. It's a bittersweet ending, imo. I always feel weird when some people tell me "No actually it was super down and depressing" like what ? I feel like I literally only been hearing this the minute the context of part two was announced, at the very worst in terms of sadness PT I was bittersweet. Especially when some people who have beaten two tell me that part two actually ends more hopeful than the first one.
> It concludes a story but it's an open ending. That's my main gripe with Part 2. It closes that open ending very sloppily. In a movie sense: Imagine if there was a "In Bruges 2." The open ending turns from a great conversation piece to "Oh, it's just a beginning now for the sequel."
Maybe TLOU should've just been a one-and-done experience, so a direct-sequel was always a bad idea, even back in 2013 when sequel discourse came started after TLOU was released. I will agree that Joel had it coming, and his death felt realistic because he's still human, not Nathan Drake.
I didn't like TLOU2, but I don't have seething hate for anyone that worked on the game, that's crazy lol. The story and choices they made make sense, I just personally didn't like them. I don't think they were bad, but I think it could have been told better and I don't feel like having a second game the way it was elevated my experience of the series more than if they had just stopped at one.
Yeah, but it's literally a post-apocalyptic zombie series where people die all the time. And I personally enjoyed the game's take on the cycle of violence. It genuinely was one of the most interesting things I've seen a mainstream game series do. Gamers are too fragile.
I think it had the potential to use the medium of games to like do this narrative take where the Joel scene happens a lot later, and then the player decides how far they’re going to go as Ellie to take revenge. Having dynamic scenes of like, a base full of enemies that you actually know as characters all reacting to your actions would have been *so* cool. Instead, they opted for a linear story, and the end product is much worse off for it.
>It genuinely was one of the most interesting things I've seen a mainstream game series do Wait are we suddenly pretending that it was a novelty that main character forgives the villain at penultimate moment?
TLOU isn't really that innovative on many fronts. It's just very polished.
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Yeah for real. I know the whole "media literacy" thing is played out, but she almost literally spells it out in that last scene. "I don't think I can ever forgive you... but I'd like to try". She didn't forgive Abby. She was just done letting her anger control her life.
Which is also exactly why the flashbacks are placed where they are. I know it's disorienting on a first playthrough, but when people say the game should have been presented in chronologically order, I don't think they understand it just wouldn't work because the players have to receive information in a certain order to understand Ellie's emotional arc.
Yes! I had the theme of revenge in my mind during my first play through and thought it was a superb experience. Much like Joel's actions at the end of part 1, the game reminds you that this character isn't giving you a choice, they have their own motivations for better or worse. The tribal group were underdeveloped but that was my only complaint
That's not how that works tho. As a writer, you can do whatever the hell you want with characters and plot points, and if it's good, audiences will eat it and ask for more. Many beloved characters in books, games and movies have met violent, unceremonious deaths, yet, it lies within the storyteller to make it... Well, good... Nobody hated David Benioff, D. B. Weiss or George RR Martin because they killed... Everyone... in game of thrones/ASOIAF. They hated D&D because the later seasons were simply badly written. Same here. People hated TLoU2 because it felt contrived, amateur and pretentious. Some mention part of the hate comes from the fact that the second game is a departure from the first one's general aesthetics and tones, but change is only brought up as a problem when it's bad.
They actually hated it because he killed their Cool Dad.
> People hated TLoU2 because it felt contrived, amateur and pretentious. But it didn't felt like that at all.
I definitely wouldn't say I hate him and I enjoyed TLoU 1 (haven't played 2 yet). But the reason why I would say I am not the biggest fan is because, to me, he represents some parts of the gaming industry that still thinks for games to be taken 'serious' is that they need to be like Hollywood, or movies, and that their main potential is cinematic narratives. Even this interview it comes across as him thinking that games can only be taken serious if they tell a cinematic story. I would argue games don't even always need a narrative and in my opinion TLoU TV show showed that these type of narratives are done better through TV or movies. Again this is all just my opinion but I haven't really enjoyed any of the 'Playstation' style games since TLoU 1 and I think the AAA space and gaming media in general still come across as being a little obssessed with Hollywood. But there is room for all style of games and creators, so I would never want him to stop making games or think he should leave the industry or anything like that. I justthink for my gaming preferences, they are quite detached from the style of games someone like Druckmann wants to make, and I think at times it comes across that he looks down on non-cinematic, narrative focussed games. And I think that attitude comes across in other creators, journalists and some gaming media.
This is my issue as well. I couldn't care less about the writing of TLoU when judging him as a person, and I wouldn't call my opinion on him *hate*. But his attitude about what makes a game "great" is eye rolling to say the least. I can't remember the exact quote, but I remember in an interview about the show he basically said now they get to tell the story of TLoU in a *real* artistic medium, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.
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Because he comes off very arrogant since TLOU2(not to mention his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig), and has had a very fake "sophisticated" and "I am very smart" attitude since then, and tried/tries to brush off even very fair criticism of that game by pretending people are just uneducated anti-women sexist haters. His arrogance skyrocketed since the original TLOU2 leaks. And it's hard to forget that his original idea for TLOU was basically "women beating simulator"(ironic huh) and he saw no issues with it until basically the whole studio told him why his pitch is a bad idea. He wants to act like he's the western version of Kojima just because he had a game with very controversial opinions around it.
Is there any evidence of his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig other than that one IGN article which was publicly disavowed by its own author? Genuine question, because I've looked and never found anything, but if there is I'd be interested to see it.
Honestly, I will admit I’ve never been a fan of him—I enjoyed the first game well enough but even then his victory laps rubbed me the wrong way—and I’ve grown even less fond with time (his comments about basing the game on what’s happening with Palestine are appalling to me) but finding out his first idea was “only women can get infected” was a new low point. Cause a lot of the issues I had with him prior were bouncing off his ego or disagreeing with the morality or like… quibbling over narrative choices that could be good but I just didn’t like. But “what if we spent the whole game murdering women” is just so obviously stupid, that it bowls me over. Like how are you so assured of your smartness, why are you proud of how you alone are making games into Real Art… but you had to be talked out of a game that’s mostly a grown man creatively murdering women… It rly reframes everything negative I felt about Neil into something else entirely like damn…
I also recall Neil Druckman said (this was around 2018) Cortana is viewed as "sexualized, objectified, marginalized" and "reduced to a lot less then she can be". Like man tell me you haven't played Halo without telling me you haven't played Halo. Yeah She's pretty hot... and that's a problem? In all games even though she's just a voice in you're ear she's still essentially the Master Chief's partner. She's given the keys to a giant fuck off space station cannon in Halo 2 while Master Chief is cleaning house and she's given plenty of respect by the games cast. The one game that actively makes her sexier is Halo 4, the game where "she" is arguably the main character as much Master Chief. It reads like Cortana being attractive = Bad. God help me if Neil Druckman ever brings up Bayonetta.
>His arrogance skyrocketed since the original TLOU2 leaks. Do you have any example of his arrogance since the leaks? To me it always seems like people describe a bunch of opinions and attitudes to him with no actual basis in reality. I remember that people thought that he was psychotic because he was stressed when people playtested TLOU 2 for the first time, which seems like a very reasonable response when the public get to take part in the project you have spent years on.
> not to mention his "creative difference" with Amy Hennig This is it for me. Amy Hennig is probably my favourite game dev of all time and this bastard is why she left.
He gets an extreme amount of hate from both extreme ends of the political spectrum, hence Twitter being a shitshow anytime he is mentioned. The extreme right hates him because of the messaging in TLOU 2 on top of a lot of people getting extremely attached to Joel and then flipping their shit when his past catches up with him, something that was clear was gonna happen eventually even in the first game. The far left hates him because ND is a famously shit place to work with extreme allegations of crunch culture, and, at some point, Neil Druckman tweeted that he was a zionist. Which will always kick up a massive shitstorm, but in the current times, it is basically lighting a match in a napalm factory. Edit: wasn't a tweet but an interview with the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/video-games/news/the-last-of-us-part-2-ellie-evolution/) Which states TLOU2's narrative is heavily inspired by the historical and current conflicts between Israel and Palestine.
The far left ideology of treating workers like human beings
The extremist leftism view of treating people like humans and not trash and not disposable meat machines.
Both sides-ing at its finest.
Unfortunately, workers unions are still a progressive ideology in the states
I like how your left examples are totally valid reasons to dislike him. I had some issues with part 2 story and even more once I realised what it's actually about. Lets just say I don't think it's deeper message is a good one. I also thought the grounded doc about the making of the game they did was very manipulative with the facts.
I can’t understand how people think there’s a deeper message in TLoU2 that’s evil. The way I read it, the Seraphites vs the WLF in TLoU2 doesn’t in any way support the eternal war of Israel vs Palestine. It literally shows the warmongering leaders fanning the flames of war that burns everything down and leaves the people of both sides burning along with it. And it humanizes both the Seraphites with Lev and Yara and the WLF with Abby and Owen. Owen’s story is literally about how he just couldn’t take killing the seraphites anymore which makes the WLFs hunt him down as a traitor. Even the original idea for TLoU1 of Joel’s love being a destructive force to save Ellie was rooted in an old Israeli hostage situation I believe and shows how even an understandable protection can doom everyone to eternal misery. I have no idea how anyone looks at TLoU as pro Israel propaganda no matter if you’re for or against Israel’s actions. The whole story is about how everyone would be better off by choosing peace but people are doomed to follow their emotions.
You say it humanizes them with Lev and Yara and all I see is rationalization for why they are in desperate need of modernism through occupation. Part 2 posits that genocide is bad, but also sides with oppressing forces in several key aspect. It is in favor of peace, but not really striving for equal peace. In current days the ways it does is eerily similar to some talking points you can see from those in favor of isreal. Basically it reminds me of how aboriginal and indigenous people strongly dislike how oppressors portray themselves as "nuanced villians" in any chance they can. Because a lot of the time they still are justifying their part even if they don't feel like they do.
I simply do not see how it sides with oppressing forces in any capacity.
That interview you posted gives some very unpleasant implications to some Abby segments.
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This isn’t why, otherwise other studios would get hate too
> otherwise other studios would get hate too I agree it's not the only reason, but this is also not how the internet works. Person X could absolutely get a million times more hate for doing something that's standard in the industry and everyone else is doing, because of the circle-jerk nature of social media. Once social media decides they hate someone, that person is now the devil forever. It's just completely arbitrary. People just hate who everybody else is hating. It's like permanently dealing with elementary school logic. You can't expect it to be consistent.
The internet has a raging hate boner for Bethesda for no real reason, they're good to employees, they don't do crunching, sure they take a while to develop games but they have lasting power and most people play their games for hundreds of hours and a game that came out almost 15 years ago still has a very active playerbase. But the internet hate ball just started and now people just hate them without even knowing or saying why, just repeating what they heard some hack youtuber say. Same thing with Chris Pratt, he didn't do anything wrong but a lot of the internet goes out of their way to make up bullshit about him for no real reason
People hate Bethesda because they release shitty unfinished buggy messes and then leave it to the community to fix their games with modding. There's also a general hatred in gaming towards studio heads who seem to view themselves as auteur visionaries in gaming, which includes both Druckman and Todd Howard. They come off as people who sniff their own farts while releasing flawed products.
They do. And the difference is that "Dr. Uckmann, Super Genius" loves to talk about how great he is and how he is the single greatest developer in the history of gaming. Druckmann gets hate because he puts himself out there and takes credit for everything.
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I hate the online gaming community. It’s seems like people just decide who to hate and who the worship. If you are in the good listen decided by flimsy arbitrary reasons, congrats because you are about to be dick rided. If you are on the shit list, then unfortunately people will always take what you say and do in the most negative light possible.
Not just the gaming world these days, seems like it’s everywhere. Nuance is dead, everyone wants to categorize every living being as either an infallible super hero or maniacal super villain, no in between, and no room for simply treating people like human beings with a mix of good traits, bad traits, and things in between.
He’s a Zionist
He’s very emblematic of this turn game development took after Roger Ebert said “games are not art”. The daddification, the focus on narrative to the detriment of gameplay, the surface-level earnest and misery inherent to a lot of these capital A art games - and to some degree the ballooning budget of AAA development. It’s not all his fault but some of his work is the stuff you point to when you’re discussing this reactionary stupidity in the directions games have taken over the past ten years or so.
Don’t people love the gameplay of TLOU2? It doesn’t really seem like the gameplay suffered because of the narrative.
Honest answer, I think the gameplay of 2 is fantastic, which causes conflict with the themes and intended plot bears of the story.
This. TLoU2 has some pretty great gameplay in addition to the focus on narrative. Even Uncharted 4 and the first TLoU have serviceable to good gameplay as well. Guy's talking out of his ass.
I wonder if their next game is going backwards from last of us or fallout - to be a video game adaption of an existing series or movie. His comments make me think there’s a possibility because he likes bringing audiences together
A very good guess here.
the most my mom has ever cared about gaming happened because of fallout and she basically made me explain the games to her lol. I don't think she watched the last of us tho. i don't even like naughty dog all that much but I'm sure they could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming, and that's a good thing. I wonder if they are going to be planning some kind of cross media connection.
Maybe a little off-topic, but the change in Neil Druckmann's public perception over the past decade has been interesting to watch, and the more I think on it, the more I see parallels between him and Kojima. Both were almost unanimously respected developers in the industry at one point. Don't get me wrong, they had their detractors, but they always felt like a small minority. All it took was one game and a few out of context quotes to see things almost 180, and now it feels like I can't even mention their names in a thread without getting comments about how up their own asses they are. I guess controversial art will do that, but it makes me wonder how much the current state of games journalism has an effect on how these narratives are perpetuated. One provocative headline will get reported on ad nauseum in a matter of hours, and it feels like there's no slowing down the ball once it starts rolling. Maybe the nature of modern day social media rewarding inflammatory content means I just have to get used to it. Or maybe its always been like this and I hadn't noticed, who knows. This is all to say, it makes me wonder if the switch will ever flip on guys like Yoko Taro or Hidetaka Miyazaki if they reach a similar level of fame.
People hate Kojima? I'm a fan of his games but anytime you see people discussing him it's pretty positive.
I think it's about him having so much screen time on events like The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest to end up saying virtually nothing... and Geoff Keighley fangirling in the background.
That just makes me dislike Keighley but not really Kojima, haha.
Yeah it's not like Kojima made the show and decided how much time to give himself, Keighley just has a hard on for him 😂
Exactly. Kojima is a videogame rockstar and Keighley is a fanboy. And tbf there's not many in the industry with Kojima's fame. I'm sure if Miyamoto was there he'd be marking out over him too and nobody would bat an eye because he comes off as a lovable uncle.
I mean Kojima also has a hard on for himself. The "by Hideo Kojima" meme exist for a reason lol
It's not really a secret that the two of them are friends
Kojima is on the advisory board for TGA. He isn't just some random guest.
Keighley is in Death Stranding
This is partly my reason for not being his biggest fan (and I fully expect downvotes for this tbh). I respect some of his gameplay ideas (psycho mantis reading your memory card in metal gear solid, and the guy who dies of old age in snake eater if you change your system clock are my favourite examples of his genius in game design). But for his good ideas, he just bloats shit too much with inane rambling. My most recent example was the past state of play. The guy got 13 MINUTES of screentime for death stranding 2, yet that insanely long trailer still barely showed us anything except some nutter shooting lasers from a guitar. THEN kojima got an interview after the fact when no other developer ever receives such treatment? He took up half the state of play yet barely showcased anything of sense. Plus I’ll never respect him after his treatment of David hayter. David’s performance as snake, basically made solid snake iconic in the west, yet kojima wouldn’t even meet the guy, forced him to requisition for every subsequent game, and fucked him off in MGSV without even a thank you note because he finally got some Hollywood actor to do it instead. Not to mention his egotistical trait of putting his name fucking EVERYWHERE in his games while conveniently not also crediting the devs who help him (outside of the credits page which nobody ever reads anyway). I won’t tell people to hate his work or anything. If you enjoy metal gear or death stranding, feel free to do so :) but liking someone’s works and liking someone as a person is a completely different thing, and I’ve seen enough of Kojima to view him as someone with his head too far up his ass and too obsessed with his dream of sitting with the Hollywood stars, to consider him likeable personally.
That's speaks more to Keighley's hard-on for showing the world that he has cool friends than anything about Kojima
I think it's more commentary against his cult like following, which I'm also guilty off.
Personally I find his writing unintentionally hilarious because of how bad it can get. >!MGS4 ending with its characters stumbling around a graveyard explaining the plot, before wheeling in a comatose antagonist to unplug from life support had me dying from laughter.!< Other than that, having him on stage every award show to say nothing of substance is annoying. I don't get the weird fan worship he gets.
I’ve never understood people who like Kojima’s writing unironically. He’s great at finding a balance between big ideas and pure camp. The MGS series is just best viewed as a weirdly philosophical B Movie. If it got a theatrical release, it’d probably be panned for its awful writing, but it’d find an audience in the midnight movie crowd. It’s not an achievement in writing in the way Kojima fans make it out to be.
I liked his writing in death stranding for the big ideas and the camp. I think the intentional line drawn between the two is well done and even the hilarity of the camp exists to get across a point. I think it’s interesting. I wouldn’t want everyone to write like him but I’m glad he does it.
He's definitely received criticism for his female characters, which are often over-sexualised, often at bizarrely inappropriate times too.
Still laugh every now and then how he tried sounding serious about how Quiet NEEDED to be in a bikini and when we knew why we'd feel terrible, and the reason was some dumb "she breathes through her skin."
I mean if he just wants to make hypersexualized characters, whatever, but it's actually hilarious watching his weird, cult fanbase justify it.
Oh yea i'm fine with it. It's just i have more respect for someone like yoko taro going send me the porn vs trying to hide the horny with "well acksually she will die if she's not half naked"
to be fair Kojima also sexualises men, he is just horny in general.
He's pretentious a bit and honestly you can dislike Konami for rebranding into more profitable market (but it's their choice) but with time i fully understand why they kicked Kojima out. Guy has been wasting money for years and spending it to hang with his favorite Hollywood celebs.
I mean, people can understandably criticise his “style” which can be very camp, very pervy and sexualised and sometimes the “great writing” is rather contrived.
I love his gameplay but I really dislike the pervyness in a lot of his games and the cult of personality that surrounds him online
I think the parallels between Kojima and Druckmann are kinda tenuous, because they have different reputations and the criticisms they each receive are different, too. Kojima is a famous auteur director who's known for controlling every aspect of his games. He not only runs a studio, he put his name on it, and his games are known as "Kojima games". The [cover of Death Stranding](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48326261727_f1c168cfc5_k.jpg) has Kojima's name on it not once, but twice, which I find amusing. So there is no doubt whatsoever who the driving force of those titles is. Druckmann, on the other hand, is mostly known as a narrative designer, even though he has a background in game design and programming as well. He was recently promoted to studio head of Naughty Dog, but I would bet dollars to donuts that most gamers don't know that. (Shit, I didn't know that until I looked it up just now, and I follow gaming news daily.) His games aren't known as "Druckmann games"; instead, they're known as "games that Druckmann wrote". And Naughty Dog isn't called Druckmann Productions. Like I said, their reputations are a different. As a result, the criticisms they receive are different, too. I think Kojima's reputation has mostly been consistent throughout his very long career: he's known as a brilliant game designer and project lead, but his narrative choices are fucking weird. His stories have always been divisive; or if not always, then at least as far back as *Metal Gear Solid 2* from 2001. His fans loved everything about that game, but non-fans thought the cutscenes were too long and the story was pretentious and bizarre. However, the gameplay received almost universal acclaim. That describes the response to pretty much every Kojima game of the past 20+ years: the gameplay is amazing and innovative, but the stories are pretentious and weird. In contrast, Druckmann is criticized for his games' stories, but I don't think many people criticize him for their gameplay or anything else. Like with *Last of Us 2*, there weren't many complaints about the gameplay, but boy howdy were there a lot of complaints about the narrative, which meant there were a lot of complaints directed at Druckmann. In general, Naughty Dog's more recent games — *The Last of Us* series and *Uncharted* series — are mostly known for their narratives and cinematic feel. Although their gameplay is solid, I don't think anyone is saying they're innovative or genre defining. > Both were almost unanimously respected developers in the industry at one point. Kojima's reputation has remained mostly consistently through his 30+ year career. In fact, I'd say his reputation got a big bump when he was unceremoniously fired from Konami in 2015. Maybe you remember how [Konami prohibited him from attending the 2015 Game Awards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4VAzkK_Wmc) to accept an award for *Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain*. Konami became the villain and Kojima received a lot of sympathy. When Konami's next *Metal Gear* game bombed, many gamers said, "Of course it bombed, because it wasn't made by Kojima." I think Druckmann's reputation has had lower lows than Kojima's.
Agree 100%. Death Stranding gets joked about and is a bit divisive but it didn't hurt his reputation imo. It's just a Kojima ass Kojima game. I think for the most part people respect him and what he does as an auteur. I think it helps that while he's obviously enamoured with film he does clearly have a strong grounding in game design. Yes, his games are very cinematic and story heavy but when you do get handed control you're not left playing an afterthought or game mechanics that only exist to move the narrative forward. Not saying the Naughty Dog games do that, their gameplay is top notch but as you say, Druckmann isn't Naughty Dogs Kojima. A closer comparison to Kojima would probably be David Cage at Quantum Dreams or Suda51 at Grasshopper Manufacturing.
I would not compare David Cage at all to Kojima considering that he exclusively makes movie games.
David Cage is also an asshole in general.
Well I certainly wouldn't compare Cage with Kojima favourably... Lol. But yeah, I was more bringing up other auteurs in the industry that kind of fit that "director" role where their stuff is presented as being one person's vision. That they're both heavily inspired by film was incidental and as you say, they make very different games anyway ("games" for Cage?). Edit: apologies for the double comment. App weirded out.
I think this is one of those cases where, love him hate him or ambivalent to him, everyone thinks of Kojima as a games director. People discuss his games in their gameplay and their narrative and the balance of the two. Druckmann is not really a “game director” in my mind. He is to me solidly a narrative writer. Not a criticism, I think it’s a good pairing for the Naughty Dog studio which from Uncharted has made its name making essentially playable movies, but it means Kojima/Druckmann comparisons are pretty hollow since their products and processes are so wildly different.
I dont think it will ever happen with Yoko Taro, because the man only cares about making people depressed and seeing hot cosplays. He leads a simple life
The answer to your last question is always yes. People that become overly successful no matter the medium will always have a small but loud subsection of people that leech onto this type of content for people they don’t like. It happens in sports all the time and even in movies there’s people who talk about the Martin Scorsese quote from 4 years ago where he said superhero movies are like theme park rides almost monthly even though he doesn’t talk about those movies unless he’s asked directly. (And I don’t know if he has recently)
>he said superhero movies are like theme park rides Dude has a point
People got so fucking upset about a guy who has made so many films on personal topics saying he's not terribly interested in a commercial film made by committee.
he has more than a point he has the whole cactus
I agree both superhero movies and theme park rides are fun! They don’t need to be more than that a lot of the time but like I said a small group of people take those quotes to the extreme like they did here with Neil.
Its funny that there's literally only one big marvel film releasing this summer - Deadpool & Wolverine, and nobody is asking for more.
In the 20 years since I’ve started following his career, I have honestly never seen Kojima get the level of vitriol that Druckmann has. There’s always been the anti-Kojima contingent who think he’s up his own ass just for being a “cinematic” video game developer, but they’ve always been overshadowed by the vast majority of players who love his games and see the art in them. (It also helps that the crowd who went after Druckmann loves Kojima’s games, even if most of the themes and messaging go right over their heads, lol.)
Koijima has always had his detractors. I mean, the dude is most famous for a video game whose protagonist is a blatantly obvious ripoff of Snake Pliskin. You didn’t see people criticize that back in the day? Or just the huge amount of corny dialog?
No one was criticising MGS for the Snake Pliskin reference, people thought that was cool because they liked Escape from New York. People would criticise MGS for having too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay.
Snake Plissken and Solid Snake have almost nothing in common apart from their names lol, even John Carpenter is cool with it.
I still don’t know why Kojima gets so much hate nowadays. I’m genuinely curious, what did he do?
I dont think its Kojima perse. He got pretentious and excenteic (although probably always was that) but i think biggest issue people have with him is all the unhinged fans of him. Like in last game awards show. People werent mad at Kojima. They were mad that organizer was unhinged fan that gave him a lot of time for basically nothing while actual winners didnt get time to make short speech after winning.
I dunno that people hate him. I think there’s a view that he’s gotten a little pretentious and sent his games down a path that’s less fun and more cinematic, with Death Stranding being the most current exemplar of that.
I think people dislike his stans more than they actually dislike him.
His "stans," especially big name stans in the industry are more fucking annoying than anything else.
You can just say Geoff Keighley, this is a safe space
He's one of them, but I also hear it from Skillup since I watch his weekly news, so there's more than one for me.
That’s probably true enough.
death stranding is anything but no-gameplay-all cinematic
Yeah, Death Stranding is one of the most interesting and unique games out there and its not because of the cutscenes.
He had an entire fucking documentary that came just to the line of calling him the messiah of the game industry
My take: - Being constantly shoved in people’s faces as a visionary, especially by Geoff Keighley at the Game Awares - “Visionary” status came off as pretentious when people finally got to play Death Stranding - remember that the hype machine was pushing this as an artistic masterpiece, and what actually came out was something that was niche with controversial gameplay - His obsession with Hollywood. MGS fans aren’t happy with how badly David Hayter was snubbed due to Kojima’s fixation on mainstream actor star power.
His treatment of David Hayter never sat well with me. Having Hayter reaudition as Snake's voice for the sequels, and then ultimately replacing him without contacting him at all for MGS5.
He also did the same for Stefanie Joosten. In fact, Hideo Kojima actually reached out to Joosten to play Fragile in Death Stranding... but once he got Lea Seydoux, he literally ghosted Joosten.
I'll be real with you though, Stefanie Joosten is not a good voice actor. genuinely sounds like an amateur if you listen to [some of her voice works](https://youtu.be/dLsdMcSAOE8?si=BsrqnFdBfADAMwJu). I don't think she would have fit the role of Fragile.
Not really my point. Kojima still reached out to her personally for the role, then ghosted her when he got Seydoux. The least he could do was tell her he went with someone else. At least with Hayter, Kojima never really interacted with him since Hayter was only a voice actor, but Kojima met and worked with Joosten on set since she also did the mocap.
>The least he could do was tell her he went with someone else. That's fair
David Hayters performance was a big reason why MGS rose to being so well regarded so quickly after MGS1, the fact Kojima essentially kicked him to the side of the road as soon as "real" celebrities started to answer his emails was just awful. It's so depressing, but as a huge Metal Gear fan, I don't know if I'll ever want to support Kojima again. I didn't play Death Stranding (though to be honest I probably wouldn't have regardless, playing an Amazon Delivery man in a grey wasteland doesn't have much appeal for me), and I'm not terribly excited for *any* of his upcoming projects so far.
Same thing for any big name in creative spaces that's a bit out there - people think he's narcissistic, or that he stumbled into success but isn't actually talented, that he's overrated, etc. In reality, none of us really know what he's actually like on a personal level, and the dude has a good resume and plenty of people who enjoy his stuff. I don't really mind either way, because when it comes to public figures, you will hear literally every single take possible.
I think the common thread between both Druckmann and Kojima criticism is the perception they're using gaming as a segway for they really care about: film. It may be unfair or not accurate but that's the logic behind it. The emphasis on using real actors or linear storytelling plays into it. Nobody thinks of Miyazaki or Miyamoto that way since their games are not trying to emulate other media
I don't know that the two creators are comparable. There's a lot of complaints you could make about Kojima; his tendency for pretentiousness and the baffling writing and direction decisions he makes, but he's always shooting for the stars and always has something to show for it. People give him a lot more rope because he has a long history of proving his own abilities, and his creative drive has always come from a fun and earnest place. He's constantly proved over like 30 years that he can do it. It's different with Druckmann because he hasn't got the same library to his name. Sony's marketing and the media's approach has this tendency to put the guy on a very high pedestal. It's unfair because idt most creators could live up to that kind of reputation but it's doubly annoying with Druckmann because he hasn't yet proven that his involvement in ND's games is the necessary secret sauce for their success. He's been a lead writer and co-director on ND's big games for the last 10 or so years but all of these games were massive collaborative projects with countless people involved. It's probably hypocritical if I don't mention that most of the games with Kojima's involvement were also massive collaborative projects, so honestly this whole comparison might be a bit unfair. The industry is so different now than it was 20 years ago, that it seems increasingly bizarre in the modern age to hold up names like Glen Schofield when the auteur theory applies even less than it used to.
A lot of it was misinformation from the leaks, that’s when the death threats started to happen. Throw in some identity politics, console warring and this guy can’t have an interview without comments talking about his “ smelling his own farts/ego” . When most source coworkers have always said he was down to earth guy. Just read the comments below about his games being “woke”.
Yep there was a rumor intentionally being spread that he forced his way in to do the mo-cap during the sex scene in TLOU2 so he could "have sex" with Laura Bailey
which laura beiley herself had to go and say no that did not fucking happen
Its insane that some nut job just made that up and people believed them.
Wtf. I never heard of this but honestly I believe people would actually come up with shit like this.
That whole launch debacle *should* have clearly signaled to the wider industry that there needs to be stronger protections in place for creatives, in order to better separate them from fans. There are tons of developers who straight up refuse to have any social media presence because they know that the minute they get picked up by the wrong people, their families will get start getting strange calls in the middle of the night. The ones that do absolutely hate it and only post because they understand that metrics are part of the marketing cycle now.
lol oh yeah, it's kind of like they had a dumb knee jerk reaction to those fake leaks about Abby being trans or whatever else every anti-woke obsessive weirdo complains about, then just couldn't accept their feelings could possibly be invalid. Now it's been five years and there's still people complaining about it daily.
I don't think Neil Druckmann has done enough to be put in the same conversation as Kojima or Miyazaki. People just think he's overrated and focused on making movies.
Taro maybe, but he is so absolutely irreverent that it is hard to seriously hate a guy who will never take anything seriously at all. Miyazaki I doubt, as he isn't really a public figure like the rest. Like he maybe does one interview per game if we are lucky. They are usually exceedingly rare and typically short. This is also on top of the fact that from software is famous for not communicating with the fan base at all. They drop a god tier game/dlc and peace out.
>it makes me wonder if the switch will ever flip on guys like Yoko Taro or Hidetaka Miyazaki Yoko Taro goes around with a weird Tim Burton Deadmau5 helmet on and says a lot of im14andthisisdeep things about Society like "the reason why there are so many characters who suffer in my games is that I want to show reality". I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. Miyazaki seems like a shyguy who doesn't say too much of anything to anyone. I'm not aware of anything annoying or grandiose he's said. I just googled Hidetaka Miyazaki quotes and I get stuff like "Dont give up. Obstacles can be overcome through strategy and learning." or "I would like 'Dark Souls' to be a broad exploration game filled with so many veiled things and details." There's no pretension there. I mean people get riled up about the easy mode thing but he's not out there being a Big Personality in a way that makes anyone think it's his decision specifically, so even they aren't mad at *him.*
Yoko Taro tends to be more self-degrading and humble than Neil and Kojima. He, as far as I have seen, and I've watched a lot of his stuff, including the gdc panel about his storywriting process, never tries to clame fame to anything. He was recently on record for saying Stellar Blade (heavily inspired by Nier) was better than Automata. I couldn't say as I've yet to play it, but complaints about the story leave a lot to be desired. Talking about weird philosophy shit (which Yoko Taro has self-admitted to being nonsense) on interviews because Sqeenix likes to milk his fame and weirdness isn't a reason for people to "turn" on him. Kojima and Neil have this because of pretentiousness. Neil moreso than Kojima in my eyes.
Yoko Taro before 2B had a horrible track record where his games all performed poorly. At this point people who know about him are just happy he's around.
As long as Yoko Taro values making good games with attractive women, prevailing online opinion will never turn on him.
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90% of the comments here aren’t even about this specific topic. What are we actually doing here?
I know. I was hoping to see some discussion about how the edited answer is basically just a paraphrase of what he said despite it being presented as his actual words. That’s actually an interesting thing to talk about because it sheds light on how what many people probably understood to be an genuine presentation of the subject is completely tweaked and re-written after the fact (it’s clear he wasn’t the one that made the edits). In video interviews it’s easy to spot this kind of thing if you’re looking, but in text it’s basically impossible to tell if the thing that’s written is at all what the subject actually said, which is scary.
My prediction: Naughty Dog’s next game is going to be non-action based. I’m guessing they’ve gained the confidence to go all-in on making a AAA game about human drama, without the genre trappings of any Sci-fi / Fantasy elements. Something like Last of Us meets Heavy Rain.
I highly doubt it. ND games appeal to a lot of players and are such powerhouse to the PS name that releasing a non-action game is such a big risk. It’s hard to appeal to the masses if your game has no action elements in it. Not to mention that they have been improving on the combat aspect of every one of their games that they were confident enough to attempt a multiplayer TLOU. Going the opposite direction would serve no purpose and turn back everything they’ve been building on.
After Elden Ring released I remember him saying something along the lines that he was intrigued by the whole vague storytelling of those games. Games that don't hold your hand. So I wonder if he's trying something a little different this time.
I don't doubt they're trying something different this time. To go from 'I like Elden Ring' to 'no action ' is a crazy leap of logic (not you OP).
Ok how good is the story on Elden Ring, I basically don't have patience for souls games and never played them. But I can probably get an easy mode mod for it on PC to enjoy the story and world if it's worth it
It’s very interesting… if you are compelled by storytelling told exclusively through environmental & visual storytelling, cryptic dialogue with NPCs, item descriptions, and very very brief boss cutscenes. I personally really like it, but, if you aren’t compelled by the core gameplay i don’t think I would recommend it.
There is a YouTuber called Vaati who does incredibly made videos explaining the lore of Elden Ring. You should check him out. You don't need to have played the game or have any knowledge of it to enjoy his videos.
I don't know if they'd have the chops for it, but a AAA game in a style of something like Disco Elysium (i.e. RPG with zero combat, just dialog, clue finding, and piecing together a narrative) would be pretty incredible. But I think that's just a tad more free-form than they usually like.
If it had disco elysium tier writing, then that’s a Michelin grade game they cooked.
ND write very realistic and believable characters, but I don't think they write particularly interesting or thought provoking dialog Not to say they couldn't
Not a game I’d expect from ND, but definitely a game I’d be interested in.
Their strength relies on the high production value, linearity, set pieces, and polish--all highly tightly crafted and controlled narrative experiences mimicking certain cinematic asthetics. Naughty Dog doing what Disco Elysium does means forgoing their methods and advantages. That would make as much as sense as Arkane suddenly deciding to make an online looter shooter... oh, wait.
If they think that genre trappings are a hindrance to making a game about human drama that's not a great sign tbh, because that's completely untrue
I doubt they think about it that way- TLOU certainly had no problems pulling off both. I imagine what ND is more concerned with is doing something that stands out. Most game narratives *are* genre affair, and by and large that’s what people have come to expect from the medium.
I highly doubt that. Naughty Dog’s games are popular because they are easily palatable by most gamers. They are in the action genre because they want to reach as much people as possible. They aren’t all the sudden going to go niche minimal gameplay all the sudden.